Tomorrow night, TV viewers will take to their couches for a night of Hollywood glamour, razzmatazz and gross hypocrisy. A bunch of vain halfwits who make millions waving guns around or taking off their clothes will preach to us about gun control and sexual morality. Yes, it’s the 493rd annual Oscar Awards.
I have the envelope in my hand, ladies and gentlemen, and there’s enough coke in it to see us through the after-party after the after-party. And the Oscar goes to…
Best Picture: ‘Harvey’s Fall’.
Harvey is a piggish producer who hangs out with the Clintons and assaults women in hotel rooms. Suddenly, he vanishes. Ben Affleck plays his son, an alcoholic gambler, who tours the rehab facilities of Arizona looking for clues. Will Harvey turn it around by promising that if he gets a second chance, he’ll go after the NRA?
Best Male Actor: Dustin Hoffman, in ‘Entitlement’.
A classic performance from Hoffman, playing against type as a past-it old ham who bullies and gropes young women and has the social skills of Rain Man. Variety praised Hoffman’s ‘sensitive butt-fondling’ and ‘tit-squeezing delivery’.
Best Female Actor: Gwyneth Paltrow, in ‘Goop’.
We thought we’d lost Paltrow to the shopping channels, but she charmed the dirty old men of the Academy by playing a single-mother colonic irrigation technician who’s not afraid to roll up her sleeves and get her hands dirty.
Best Supporting Male Actor: Quentin Tarantino, in ‘The Enabler’.
Tarantino gave an unforgettable performance as a director who spent most of the Nineties in a jacuzzi, but now says he can’t remember what happened.
Best Supporting Female Actor: Uma Thurman, in ‘Car Crash’.
A heart-rending, leg-breaking turn from Thurman as a young actress who’s maimed on set because the director insists she does her own stunts.
Best Screenplay: Ronan Farrow, for ‘Woody Hall’.
No one in Hollywood or Manhattan saw the twist in the plot of ‘Woody Hall’ coming, even if everyone else had for years. ‘Woody Hall’ begins as a family comedy, but it takes a dark turn. Woody, a stand-up comic who thinks he’s a philosopher, is the adoptive father of sixteen children. When the family gathers around the Hanukkah Tree, his son accuses him of molestation. Woody gets away it: he can prove he was on honeymoon with his stepdaughter at the time.
Best Animation: Clint Eastwood, for ‘Walking Without A Stick’
Clint Eastwood began his career in silent movies. His voice is now so weak that he’s ending his career in them too. The scene in which Eastwood garrotes a terrorist with a catheter tube brought tears to the Academy’s eyes.
Most Patronized Black Actor:
The Oscar for the most patronized performer of African American descent is a tough one to call. Morgan Freeman usually gets the most whoops from the almost entirely white audience, but he took last year off for tax reasons. The Oscar goes to Oprah Winfrey, for her content-free but gratuitously whoopable performance in ‘Madame President’.
Best Original Soundtrack: Roman Polanski, for ‘Sleazeball’.
Polanski recorded this Seventies-themed soundtrack in a studio in France because the police will arrest him if he ever comes back to America. Jack Nicholson will collect the Oscar on Polanski’s behalf.
Best Foreign Film: The Italian Hand Job.
Critics and boarding school head teachers loved this coming of age story from the acclaimed Italian director Paedo Fantasia. In this simple but appealing family drama, a lithe young American boy travels to Italy and gets shagged by a much older man while his wife watches. An American adaptation is in works. In that, a lithe young girl travels to Los Angeles and is sexually exploited by a series of film producers. Working title, ‘Business As Usual’.
